ADEDY public sector workers announce a 24hr strike for 14th December and are calling on the private sector to join them, in protest of the new tax rules for 2018 such as the lowering of the income tax-free freshold from 9.545 euros to 5.681 euros.

The stone must be getting pretty anaemic by now? I understood that the poverty line in Greece stood at €7,178. If they drop the tax free threshold to €5,681 then they are taxing people who are officially living in poverty.

Kilkis wrote:The stone must be getting pretty anaemic by now? I understood that the poverty line in Greece stood at €7,178. If they drop the tax free threshold to €5,681 then they are taxing people who are officially living in poverty.

Warwick

The tax free threshold i Norway is less than 5.000 euro and the povertylevel is "slightly" higher, maybe six times higher? What are the equivalent figures in other countries like f.inst. UK?

In the UK the personal allowance is £11,500, slightly less than €13,000 at today's exchange rate. Official poverty level is classed as about £15,000, slightly less than €17,000. Again the allowance is less than the poverty level. I don't understand the logic. You are classed as living in poverty but you are judged to be capable of paying income tax. It makes no sense to me.

Warwick

PS Incidentally median income in Norway is €28,614. In the EU the poverty level is regarded as being 60 % of median income so for Norway that would be €17,168, i.e. about 2.4 x the figure for Greece not 6 x.

Sorry to say, but you got the figures wrong as far as income in Norway is concerned. In 2015 the median income per household AFTER tax was 491.000 norwegian kroner and leave it to you to sort out what this means and in what currency as this seems to fluctuate.

You are conflating two different statistics. ALL the figures I quoted are per-capita not per household. Income tax, and associated tax free level which the discussion is about, is determined by individual income not by household income. It is important therefore to use individual values for all other variables in the comparison. The figure I quoted was from the Nordic Library for 2016. You are correct, however, that it is after tax, which I hadn't noticed, so gross would be a bit higher but still nowhere near 6 x Greece.

Your link shows median income per household, not per capita as you claim? By per capita do you mean per person with income or all citizens of a country from 0 to 100 years of age regardless of income or not? The average income for norwegians with an income is abpout 40.000 norwegian kroner per month. Slightly lower for women and slightly higher for men. These figures are regardless of parttime or fulltime employment.

This indicator shows the total income of a household, in the Nordic region, in euro after tax and other deductions that is available for spending or saving, divided by the number of household members converted into equivalised adults;

The information I have today, from a normally reliable source, is that at the moment this law is only a provision. The creditors are insisting that it is voted through parliament and placed on the statue books but the cut will only be implemented if the government fails to meet the fiscal targets it has agreed. For example, if they failed to meet their target in 2019 the cut would apply in 2020. At least that leaves some possibility that it won't come into force.

Which link? The only link I posted was to the Nordic Library document for Norway. If you bother to read this document you will find the following statement:

"In the EU, people falling below 60% of median income are said to be at-risk-of poverty."

Note the terms "EU" and "below 60 %". The figures I used in my original post were all gross figures so no errors on either count.

In reality it doesn't make a lot of difference. When we are discussing incomes between the tax free threshold and the poverty level the amount of tax paid is small, so the difference between net and gross is small, but it is still difficult for people at that level of income to pay it. I accidentally used a net after tax figure when I pointed out that the poverty level income in Norway was nowhere near the 6 x Greece that you claimed. I think the Nordic Library document supports what I said, despite the fact it is net. Given the figures in the Nordic Library document the gross poverty level income would only be 6 x that in Greece if somebody with a poverty level income in Norway paid 60 % tax.